The young students who will be awarded with Instituto TIM-OBMEP scholarships in 2015 have already been selected. The registration for the scholarship – a partnership between Instituto TIM and the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), which hosts the Brazilian Public School Math Olympics (OBMEP) – closed on February 11th. Of the 462 students enrolled, 205 had their registration validated (that is, they filled in their information and agreed with the requirements). The socioeconomic status of each candidate was among the criteria used to choose the 50 young people. Those selected will receive a monthly grant of R$ 1,200 to attend college. The scholarships will have a duration of 12 months, renewable annually for up to a maximum of 48 months.
To sign up, students should have been awarded a gold, silver or bronze medal in any edition of OBMEP; and have been admitted to a program at a public university in 2015 in the following areas: Astronomy, Biology, Computing, Engineering, Statistics, Physics, Mathematics or Chemistry. At the end of the process, 15 Mathematics students (10 in a teaching degree), 31 Engineering students, 2 Physics students and 2 Computer Science students were chosen.
In 2016, another 50 young students will be selected for the Instituto TIM-OBMEP scholarships. In 2014, the year in which OBMEP celebrated a decade, 18 million public school students across the country signed up to participate in the Olympics. At the end of the process, there were 6,500 medallists.